Employment numbers show the economy is buoyant

UNEMPLOYMENT has fallen to a five-year low with 30.43 million people now working in Britain.

The UK's economy has been growing close to the Bank of England's predictions [GETTY]

This is thanks to the highest quarterly growth in employment since records began in 1971.

The reasons behind such promising growth are not difficult to discern.

This Government’s long-term economic plan was in part intended to boost British business.

It has encouraged the private sector to flourish while the overbearing state has been scaled down. The effect has been galvanising.

The economy is continuing to grow and inflation has remained close to the Bank of England’s target rate.

Conservative MPs were in good cheer during Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday. They had every reason to be

The latest employment figures reflect the increasing confidence of companies operating in this country as they take on staff.

Growth has also been driven by the entrepreneurship of a record 4.5 million self-employed people.

This reflects a stirring spirit of independence and self-reliance.

Rather than relying on generous handouts from the state as they may have done under Labour, people have been encouraged to set out and make their own way in the world.

Our society is the better for it.

Conservative MPs were in good cheer during Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday. They had every reason to be.

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End prescription charges

The Daily Express whole-heartedly agrees with Dr James Cave, editor of medical journal The Drug And Therapeutics Bulletin, who has written a piece calling for prescription charges in England to be scrapped.

The cost of a prescription in England now stands at £8.05, a ridiculous sum to be billing people when many of the drugs prescribed cost the NHS just pennies and prescriptions are free in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The Department of Health’s central argument is that prescription charges are “an important source of revenue for the NHS in England”.

However that does not explain how the devolved parliaments in the rest of the UK can afford to save their citizens from these healthcare costs while people in England still have to pay.

We must put people first and make sure that everybody in Britain can have free access to the medicines they need.